A small consulting team works with presentations a lot, for clients and for workshops. There was plenty of material: notes, interview summaries, earlier documents. A good template in the firm’s own design, too. And, recently, its own AI assistant.
What wasn’t written down anywhere was the path in between. What comes first? What gets checked? Where does the slide take shape? And who takes the last look?
One path, six steps
I turned that path into a guide. In the assistant, the material is sorted and the message is clarified. That becomes a slide plan: what goes on which slide. The checked text is saved as a document. Then the slides take shape in a copy of the team’s own template, with AI if they want. Refine and check. Hand it over, and write down what was learned along the way.
It comes with prompts to copy, the most common stumbling blocks and how to get past them, and a final checklist. To start, there is a practice run with internal notes before a real presentation is at stake. The same path also leads to a handout in Word.
Nothing was reinvented
The existing templates stayed the foundation, and so did the design. What is new is the order, and one clear rule: “The AI delivers the draft. The interpretation is yours. No slide goes out until you have checked it.”
The guide belongs to the team. It is built for the next presentation and every one after that.
A finished presentation is a deliverable. So is the way to the next one.